Capacitive Power Coupler & Capacitive Machine

[Qwert]

How two parallel plates made of a uniform material exert force to make them move one against another? I understand they can exert perpendicular force but I don't know the other way.

[conradelektro]

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And for any capacitor to hold off voltage it has to have a pretty good dielectric in between the charge-carrying plates. It doesn't take much voltage to jump a 0.004 inch air gap. So I can believe that they have large capacitances, maybe... but not at high voltages without something other than air in between rotor and stator plates. Capacitor plates also experience an attractive force from the opposite charge concentrations. I am having a lot of trouble understanding how an air cushion can keep two oppositely charged, flexible plates from making contact, at any point, when their nominal separation is that small to begin with.
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Does the air cushion come from the spinning itself, or is it supplied by an external source of compressed air? If the first, then what happens when the thing isn't spinning but power still needs to be transferred? If it is externally supplied, what happens if that supply is interrupted for some reason while the system is operating at kiloWatt power transfer levels?
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@TinselKoala: You are right, there are a lot of unexplained factors in this "invention". Let's hope there are more ideas in this machine than the "inventors" disclose. If not, it is just nonsense or grand standing.

These electrostatic machines are hard to understand (motors and specially the generators), and I am not even sure that anybody really understands them completely. I read a few different explanations.

I always wondered if an electrostatic generator (Whimshurst, Bonetti, ..) keeps functioning in an airtight housing? There should be air in the housing, but no air exchange with the outside. And let's assume there are wires leading the generated charge out of the air tight housing where it is grounded.

My own unproven theory is that these generators steal the charge from positive and negative air ions and if there is no fresh air, after some time, no more air ions can be discharged (neutralised).

The functioning of these generators depends a lot on the weather or climate in a room (humidity is not the only factor). Some days they work better and some days they hardly work. My tests worked better in winter during the night, may be because the rooms are dryer, but I was never sure about this.

Greetings, Conrad

[TinselKoala]

How two parallel plates made of a uniform material exert force to make them move one against another? I understand they can exert perpendicular force but I don't know the other way.

The patent drawing shows some segmented plates, like Maltese crosses but with more arms. If you are familiar with how some electrostatic voltmeters work, they may be using the same idea, where two segmented plates will try to rotate so their segments overlap completely. If you remove the charge at that point inertia can carry the plates to the non-overlapping position, where charge can then be re-applied to once again draw them towards full overlap. This is a weird way to make a motor but it does work.
However I did not read the patent carefully enough, I just looked at the pictures, so I don't know if their motor is actually supposed to work that way.

[TinselKoala]

@TinselKoala: You are right, there are a lot of unexplained factors in this "invention". Let's hope there are more ideas in this machine than the "inventors" disclose. If not, it is just nonsense or grand standing.

These electrostatic machines are hard to understand (motors and specially the generators), and I am not even sure that anybody really understands them completely. I read a few different explanations.

I agree. Even the old and well-known ones are not fully understood. And you are right, you can find several different explanations of how they work. But they are understood well enough so that they can be engineered, improved, and every now and then someone does actually come up with a really new design, so the understanding can't be all that wrong. Maybe just different flavors of "right".

I always wondered if an electrostatic generator (Whimshurst, Bonetti, ..) keeps functioning in an airtight housing? There should be air in the housing, but no air exchange with the outside. And let's assume there are wires leading the generated charge out of the air tight housing where it is grounded.

My own unproven theory is that these generators steal the charge from positive and negative air ions and if there is no fresh air, after some time, no more air ions can be discharged (neutralised).

It's a nice theory, but I think it's wrong. Actually I think they separate charge that exists in the machine itself. That is, when the machine is idle and discharged, the capacitors and metal parts are all neutral. But when you start up the machine it starts separating the charges in the caps and metal parts, pumping the electrons with their negative charges all over to one side of the machine, which results in "holes" on the positive side. They are charge separators, not charge accumulators. All the charge they are working with is already in the machine to begin with. The input of mechanical power is what separates the charge and pumps the electrons over to one side.
Now, all that being said... would they work in a vacuum? I think a Wimshurst will, but a Bonetti won't. The reason is the contact. A true Wimshurst has brushes that make physical contact with the charge-carrying metal sectors on the discs. This is why they will self-charge. The Bonetti, though, relies on corona emission from the non-contact combs which deposit and receive charge from the surface-charged portions of the non-conductive discs. So there has to be some gas that can be ionized, for this to happen, and the machines must always have a little charge imbalance in order for the induction process to begin. In my Bonettis, I have discovered how to apply this starting charge with my fingers. Others use rabbit fur and pvc pipe, or an electronic supply, or even a beta-emitter, to provide the starting charge.
But I think yours would be an interesting experiment to perform. Perhaps, as you say, the system will come to some equilibrium and stop charging, especially if some of the power is used outside the enclosure.

The functioning of these generators depends a lot on the weather or climate in a room (humidity is not the only factor). Some days they work better and some days they hardly work. My tests worked better in winter during the night, may be because the rooms are dryer, but I was never sure about this.

Greetings, Conrad

You are right about that too. I have found, and more experienced workers agree, that it isn't so much the moisture in the air itself that hurts ES machine performance, but rather the thin film of water adsorbed onto the surfaces of the machines from the humid air that does it. Combined with dust etc. the water makes conductive paths that short out the machine or bleed off charge to where it doesn't belong. This is good, though, because it means that gently warming the machine itself with a blow dryer can "instantly" restore full functioning in humid weather. I have given ES demonstrations in full rainstorm weather by doing this. A small blowdryer is a permanent part of my ES demonstration kit. Be careful though, a low power unit is best because it's easy to melt plastic with too much heat.
The colder the outside air the better. When I was in Toronto, and the outside air would get down to -20C sometimes... the ES machines loved it!

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